The idea of finality leads one back to the idea of fact, one is no longer tempted to attempt an explanation of nature. One would try modestly to reconstruct the chain of causes and, as a great number of rings will always be lacking, and as the absence of one ring alone would suffice to unhook the whole reasoning, one will do this in a piety tempered by scepticism.
The epirus, although a spider, is not an ill-conditioned beast; she is episcopal, she carries on her back a pretty white cross upside down. The large ones are the females; the very small ones, the males. Both hook their webs upon bushes, on shrubs, live without knowing each other until instinct has spoken. A day comes when the male is restless; the gnats fail to satisfy him; he leaves, he abandons the home he will perhaps not see again. He is not, indeed, without misgivings, and fear is mingled with his desire, for the mistress he seeks is an ogress. Thus he prepares a way of retreat in case of combat; he stretches a thread from the female's web to a neighbouring branch, road of entry, gate of exit. Often, the instant he shows himself with his excited air, the female epirus leaps on him and eats him without formality. Is it ferocity? No, stupidity. She also is awaiting the male, but her attention is distraught between the coming of the caller and the coming of prey. The web has shaken, she leaps, enlaces, devours. Perhaps a second male if he attempt the pass, will be gladly received, the first sacrifice accomplished, perhaps this mistake, if it is one, will wake all the amorous attention of the distracted female? Ferocity, stupidity; there is another explanation which I will give later, apropos the mantis and the green grass-hopper: it is very probable that the sacrifice of the male, or of a male, is absolutely necessary, and that it is a sexual rite. The little male approaches; if he is recognized, and if his coming coincides with the genital state of the female, she merely behaves like all the rest of her peers, and even though she be the larger and stronger, she flees; she lets herself, full of coquetry, slide down a thread; the male imitates the play, he descends, she mounts, he mounts, the acquaintance is made, they feel each other, they pat each other, the male fills his pump, the mating is accomplished. She is rapid, the male stays on guard, ready to flee at the least movement of his adversary; often he hasn't time. Scarcely has the fecundation been finished when the ogress turns, leaping, and devours the suitor on the very spot of his amours. They say that she does not always wait for the end of the operation, and that preferring a good meal to a caress, she interrupts the performance with a slap of her mandibles. When the male has the luck to escape he disappears like a flash, goes down his thread like greased lightning. The argyronete uses manœuvres analogous, but even more curious. It is a water spider, which goes under water in an ingenious small diving-bell, a future nest. The female having made her diving-bell, the male, not daring to present himself thinks out the wheeze of making another bell just next that of the female. Then at a propitious moment he breaks through the dividing wall and profits by the surprise of his sudden entry. When it is a matter of not being eaten, all means are the right ones.
The tarantula, whose habits are far from gentle, is not cruel to her suitor. This monster who spins no web, spins out a long idyllic courtship. Extended preludes, puerile games, delicate caresses, lambkins' leapings. Finally the female surrenders fully. The male places her as he wishes, chooses for her the pose most pleasing to him, and lies obliquely against her, gently and repeatedly taking the sperm from his abdomen he insinuates each of his palpes, one after the other in the swollen vulva of the female. The break-away is sudden, a jump. Still more tender are the courtships of the leaping spider; they advance by little rushes, stop, watch, leap on their prey, insect or fly, or else float at the wind's will on the end of a long hanging web-thread. When male and female meet, they approach, tap each other with forefeet and tentacles, separate, reapproach, recommence. After a thousand salutations, they pose head to head, the male climbs onto the female, stretches out until he reaches the abdomen. Then he lifts the extremity of it, applies his palpe to the vulva, and retires. The same act is begun again several times, the female is all compliance and offers no insult to her companion. There are certain exceptions to the method of spiders; the reapers, little balls mounted on immense legs, act by cavalage. The males have a retractile prong fixed by two ligaments to the abdomen, the female an oviduct which opens in vulva and spreads interiorly into a vast pouch, the resting place for the eggs. The male does not manage this female, a strong objector, save by seizing her mandibles with his pincers. Overcome by this bite she submits; the coupling lasts several seconds.
The dragon-fly, gracefully called "la demoiselle," is one of the finest insects in the world and certainly the most beautiful of those which fly in our climate; no soft butterfly colour is a match for the moving shimmer of its supple abdomen, and the bright head-colours as of steely-blue helmet. Description? It is difficult to find two alike; one has tawny body and dove-grey abdomen, spotted with yellow, and black feet, transparent wings with brown borders or nerve-veinings, or these in black and white; another has a yellow head, brown eyes, brown corselet veined in green, an abdomen touched with green and yellow, irised wings; another called "la Vierge" is gilded green, or blue with green shimmer, and spotless wings; another "la Jouvencelle" has wings thin to invisibility, is clothed in all shades, metallic blue, reddish-brown green, iris violet, tawny chrysanthemum, whatever her fundamental colour she encircles her elegant barrel with rings of black velvet. Naturalists divide these insects into libellules, æshnes, agrions; Fabricius disputes with Linnæus; peasants and children (for grown-ups despise nature) call them "demoiselles," "vierges" and "jouvencelles."[1] Some fly very high, in the trees, others along the streams and over pond edges; others over ferns, reeds, broom. I have passed days in the sun watching them, waiting to see their courtships; I have seen them, and know that Réaumur has not deceived us. It was on the surface of a pond among the border flowers, a morning of July, a flaming morning. The "Vierge," corselet of blue green, almost invisible wings, fluttered in great numbers, slowly, as if seriously; the hour of parade had arrived. And everywhere couples formed, rings of azure hung from the grass blades, trembled on leaves of the water-lentil, everywhere green arrows and blue arrows played at flight, and wing-brushing, at joining. The big eyes and strong head of the libellule give an air of gravity to the brilliancy of this spectacle.
The ejaculatory canal opens at the ninth ring of the abdomen, that is to say, at the point; the copulating apparatus is fixed at the second ring, that is, near the neck, and is composed of a penis, of hooks, and a reservoir: the male bending his long belly first fills the reservoir, then empties it into the organs of the female. For a long time he pursues the desired mistress, plays with her, finally seizes her above the neck with the terminal pincers of his abdomen, then, turning like a serpent, he bends forward and continues to fly, a beast with four pairs of wings. In this attitude, the male, sure of himself, with the air of the hour's indifferent master, chases midges, visits flowers and the axilla of plants where the midges sleep, nabs them with his feet and puts them into his mouth. Finally the female accedes, bends downward her flexible abdomen and makes its orifice coincide with the male's pectoral penis: the two beastlets are but one splendid ring with a double cup, a ring trembling with life and with fire.
No gesture of love can be conceived more charming than that of the female slowly bending back her blue body, going half way toward her lover, who erect on his forefeet bears, with taut muscles, the full weight of the movement. It is so pure, so immaterial, one would say that two ideas joined in the limpidity of ineluctable thought.
[1] In America we have, so far as I know, only the terms "dragon fly" and "darning-needle," and for the larger ones "devil's darning-needle."—E. P.